It's remarkable that something as simple as a choker necklace can symbolise so much. The name alone makes you sit up. After all, a choker is clinging and tight, possibly uncomfortable to wear, and not unlike some kind of shackle. Like any necklace it frames the face, in the way jewelled collars and fabric ruffs did in Renaissance times, but it also brings particular focus to the neck, so often a symbol for feminine beauty. In some Asian and African cultures, metal rings are sometimes used to elongate the neck, the more rings the better, although it's more a matter of deforming the clavicle bones to create the illusion. The choker, thankfully, is not so invasive.
The oldest versions known are from Mesopotamia where several strands of beads were laced together with silver and worn probably to ward off evil, as well as making a statement of wealth. And so it progressed through cultural history. It may be myth but it's said that in the 1790s French women wore a red ribbon choker to show sympathy for victims of the guillotine during the French Revolution, and that British women wore them to taunt the French for their barbarism. At the same time, in Alpine regions of Europe where a lack of iodine led to the development of neck goitres, women wore chokers called kropfkettes, made of dainty silver filigree or semi-precious stones to hide the disfigurement. In a similar way, some transgender women wear a choker to hide a prominent Adam's Apple.
In the early nineteenth century, a black ribbon worn as a choker came to symbolise prostitution. Which is why Edouard Manet's painted nude of 1863, Olympia, caused such a scandal, the black choker at her neck revealing the subject to be more a reclining prostitute than a reclining Venus. This interpretation of the choker persists today, with some women still being shamed for wearing one.
By the end of the 19th century, the choker was particularly fashionable. In Britain, Princess Alexandria, later Queen, sported a collar of diamonds and pearls, some surmised to hide a scar. A neck encased in diamonds was certainly dramatic, and was seen again in the extravagant Art Deco pieces of the 1920s. Chokers dipped in and out of fashion for the rest of the century. Velvet chokers complete with cameos were all the rage in the 1970s, harking back to the Victorian era, but the emerging punk movement reclaimed them, too, although worn more like a dog collar, studs and all, as a sign of society's bondage and the anarchy needed for freedom.
Today the choker remains a straightforward item of decorative jewellery but its wide-ranging history makes it also a symbol of how femininity has been enforced and interpreted. It's perhaps a symbol of the dualism of feminism, an ironic statement of power and submission, and a simple way of saying 'I own myself'.
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